Without a Trace

by Michael Cross

  “So… you’re alive, Agajanian and his goons are headed to prison,” she says. “And Special Agent Hall is in line for a big promotion?”

  “Like I said, without a hitch.”

  She lets out a sigh that somehow seems bigger than her entire body.

  “Remind me to never let you do this again, Echo.”

  I chuckle. “Consider yourself reminded.”

  I find a certain elegance in simplicity, so I kept the plan as simple as I could and did my best to avoid breaking too many laws. The more you have to explain to authorities makes the lies you have to tell all the more complex. And we wanted to avoid that. Of course, there are going to have to be a few white lies thrown into the mix to make the story pass muster, but even those we tried to keep simple.

  To that end, I posed as an undercover informant who was working a drug buy with Agajanian. On the strength of our deal, I gained access to the clearing house. The Bureau agreed to work with me on a wire if I could get Agajanian to admit to his charges. He was too good for that, but I was lucky that his moron sidekicks were around to spill the beans for us.

  The discovery of the women he was trafficking will add another brick to the wall of evidence around him since it’s going to further erode his credibility with any potential jury.

  In reality, I headed into the club knowing Hall and his men were posted up in a utility truck down the street from the club and hit the button on the fob they’d given me when I made entry. That started the clock. They were breaching the doors eight minutes after I hit that button, whether I found the drugs or not.

  The trick was that I had to thread the needle between the four minutes for the security alarm and the eight minutes for the FBI. I was not about to let the local LEOs in Agajanian’s pocket onto this case. Had they gotten there before Hall and his team did, there is no way we could have successfully pulled this off.

  And of course, should there be a trial, I will be on hand to testify to the ‘facts’ of the case. Or at least, one of Hall’s UCs that bears a vague resemblance will be on hand. Understanding I can’t be anywhere near this, Hall found a UC who agreed to participate. For a tidy sum of cash, of course.

  There are a number of legal niceties and hoops they’ll have to jump through now, but I’ll leave the fine details to Hall and his team. He said he doesn’t expect it to go to trial since they’ve got the goods on Agajanian.

  Add in a charge of attempted murder that Arthur will testify to, as well as charges of extortion and racketeering that the other business owners will no doubt line up at the witness stand for, now that they don’t have to fear him, and Agajanian will likely never see the light of day again. The only negotiating to be done is how many decades the man will sit in prison.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, Echo. I’m seriously, really relieved.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I say. “And hey, I couldn’t have pulled this off without you. You did some really great work, kid.”

  She pauses for a beat, and then I hear the smile in her voice again. “Yeah I did, didn’t I?”

  “Call you later.”

  “Sounds good.”

  I disconnect the call and head back to the hotel, where I tend to my wounds and get some rest. It’s been a hell of a long night.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I’m sitting in the sculpture park on a cool, overcast day. I’ve hung around Minneapolis for the last week, waiting for Arthur to be released from the hospital, to make sure he was okay.

  “Back where we started, huh?”

  Arthur is limping more than usual, leaning heavily on a cane as he sits down beside me on the bench. He winces as he settles down and sits back. Most of the swelling in his face has gone down, but it’s still a roadmap of cuts, scars, and colors that just don’t look natural.

  “How are you feeling?” I ask.

  “Like a sack of hammered shit,” he responds. “You?”

  “Not nearly as rough as you.”

  “Asshole.”

  He chuckles, the effort making him grimace. The ribs are going to take some time to heal up. My wounds are far more superficial. The dark bruises on my face are already fading, and though my nose is still tender to the touch, it’ll heal on its own just fine. The gash in my leg still hurts, but that too is fading. My road to recovery is a lot quicker than Arthur’s, I’m afraid. But at least he’s alive. Though, that brings a question to mind.

  “Why do you think Agajanian didn’t just kill you that night?” I ask. “I mean, why risk letting you live? He even tried to lead me on to believe that he killed you, just to piss me off. But that’s what got him.”

  “Honestly? I think he figured he was gonna kill you,” he replies. “With you outta the way, the rest of us would be too terrified to say boo to the man. He knew he’d be able to force even more money out of us.”

  “Until you had to go out of business and would sell to him cheap,” I muse, nodding as the scheme unfolds in my mind. “Rather than wait through years of legal maneuvering to buy the land at auction. And at a higher cost.”

  He nods. “Uh huh. Least, that’s my two cents on it.”

  “Makes sense to me,” I say. “You gonna get some help with the bar until you heal up?”

  “Son’s comin’ up from Charleston,” he tells me. “He’s been livin’ there with his mom. But he’ll be here in a few days. Help me run things. Maybe eventually take it over.”

  “That’s good, Arthur. That’s really good.”

  “It’ll be good to spend some time with my kid,” he says.

  I feel a faint pang in my heart at his words. Almost like I’m missing spending time with my kid as well. It fades away quickly, but for just a moment there, I felt that bitter sting of loss piercing my soul.

  “Tell me something,” I say as I slip the picture out of my pocket. “Is this my wife and child?”

  He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, son,” he says. “But I don’t know.”

  “I thought you read my file?”

  “Skimmed it,” he clarifies. “Remember, I already had one foot out the door. I only got through your service jacket and didn’t get to your personal dossier before I pulled the pin.”

  I sigh and sit back against the bench. He looks over at me with a look of compassion and sympathy in his eyes.

  “I really am sorry, son.”

  “It’s okay. It’s not your fault,” I tell him. “I just—I don’t feel like I had a wife and a kid. They gave me this picture and said they were, but I feel no connection to them. They might as well be complete strangers to me.”

  “They never shoulda given you that photo.”

  I shake my head. “I keep expecting to wake up and have all my memories restored. But it never happens.”

  “You know how this game works,” Arthur sighs. “They’ll lie and manipulate you to achieve their goals. Hell, we do the same thing to our assets in the field, don’t we?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  I nod, the feeling of being used like an asset sits heavy in my gut, churning and leaving a greasy residue in its wake. Is this what I did to people in the field? I don’t like the feeling of it at all. The very idea of doing this to another person makes me feel terrible.

  “We had to play mind games with people to keep people safe,” he says. “And you were excellent at what you did.”

  “So I fucked people over for a living?”

  He shakes his head. “Nah. From what I read, you helped a lot of people. Took good care of your assets. Saved a lot of lives,” he goes on. “From what I read, you did your job well and with honor. Didn’t just burn through people like some operators tended to do.”

  As he speaks, an image of a tall, bookish looking man fills my mind. Round, wire-rimmed spectacles and a thick mustache. I see him in a tweed jacket and remember thinking it odd on such a hot day. I feel like I know him, but I can’t quite tease his name out of the jumbled mess in my brain. But I’m left with a profound sense of grief, anger, and loss. And I don’t
know why.

  As soon as the image flashes through my head though, it’s gone again. I’m once again left grabbing at smoke and shadows.

  “You served your country with distinction, son,” he says. “Army Airborne. Then the Green Berets. Ran a lot of ops in the Middle East. Same as when you joined the Agency. You were widely considered an expert on Middle East strategy.”

  He spends about five minutes vaguely detailing exploits that I have no memory of. He has no names or specifics but gives me some general details. He tells me everything he knows, but I feel absolutely no connection to it. It means no more to me than watching it on a television screen. There’s just nothing there. I slam my fist down on the park bench, growling in frustration.

  “Easy now, son,” he says. “You can’t bull in a china shop your way back into your memories.”

  “So I’m learning.”

  “When you learn to relax and loosen that grip you have on yourself, they’ll come,” he says. “It’s when you stop tryin’ so hard that they’ll float on back to you.”

  “I wish it was that simple.”

  He shrugs. “Maybe you should try my way,” he offers. “Since your way doesn’t seem to be workin’ out so hot for you.”

  A laugh bursts from my throat, and I nod. He might be right. Nothing I’ve done has worked. Maybe his approach will.

  “So tell me about the Tower,” I say. “Are they good guys, or are they bad?”

  He thinks for a moment before answering. “Son, I’ll take it easy on you ‘cause you don’t remember shit, but you should know better than that,” he says. “See as much as I have; you start to realize there’s no such thing as a good guy. Just operators playin’ the game for their own ends.”

  I nod.

  “The Tower… well, they sometimes do bad things, but I think their objectives are good. And they’re a hell of a lot better than the Hellfire Club. Those assholes… they’re all bad, Echo.”

  “So I’m gathering.”

  “What I’m saying is you need to watch your back,” he says, very seriously. “If they catch wind of you, they will stop at nothing to eliminate you.”

  “Why? I’m just another operator in this big game.”

  “Not so much. The Hierophant himself recruited you,” he tells me. “As much for your talent as for your name, the way I understand it.”

  “Who is the Hierophant?”

  “Top of the food chain in the Tower, right after the Emperor himself. As to who he is, well, I think you know the answer to that question.”

  “Yeah, nobody knows,” I mutter. “But what about my name? What is my name?”

  He shakes his head. “Your name was redacted in the file I read. Only your Case Officer knows.”

  “And she won’t tell me,” I gripe. “Something about protecting me from opening doors I’m not ready to go through yet.”

  “She’s smart. And she very well may be protecting you,” he nods. “Listen, the only thing I know is that whoever your father is, he’s a big deal. He’s a high up in some unnamed governmental body, and he’s the tip of the spear in the Hellfire Club.”

  I sit back and let out a sigh, trying to process everything he’s telling me. Which isn’t much, unfortunately. With no names or solid intel to fall back on, I’m still left with a bunch of puzzle pieces and no idea how they all fit together. But then something clicks.

  “You know my Case Officer?”

  “I don’t know her, per se. But I know of her. The High Priestess,” he says. “We never met face to face. But we worked together for a while, and when I was heading out the door, I knew she was going to take you on. She’s good. Smart. Passionate. And like you, very protective of her assets.”

  I chew on my thumbnail, trying to find a way to put some order to the chaos in my head and come up with nothing.

  “After your accident the Tower was going to cut you loose. They were content to leave you to rot in some hospital, not sure if you were ever going to wake up,” he explains. “It was the High Priestess who argued for you. She convinced them to leave you in her care until you woke up. From a certain perspective, you owe her your life.”

  “So you’re saying I should trust her.”

  He scoffs. “You know the only person you can truly trust is yourself,” he says. “But if you put your trust into somebody, she’s not a bad choice. She looked out for you when nobody else was going to, son.”

  “You admire her.”

  He nods. “I do. I believe that she is genuinely committed to making this world a better place for everybody,” he tells me. “In that way, you two are a lot alike.”

  Pursing my lips, I turn my face up to the clouds and watch as some birds circle lazily overhead.

  “Listen, this job and the people in it will chew you up and spit you out. Their sole focus is on achieving their objectives. They don’t care who gets crushed beneath their boots. All they care about is winning this game,” he tells me. “Might not be a bad idea for you to consider pulling the pin yourself. Just walk away from all this and try to find some peace.”

  A rueful grin touches my lips. “I think you know the answer to that,” I say. “I can’t. At least, not until I figure out who I am and why I signed up to play this game in the first place.”

  He nods but looks a little sad. “Yeah, I figured you were gonna say that. Still, had to make my pitch.”

  He gets to his feet and turns to me, and I know I’ve gotten all he has to give. It’s not much, but maybe with this information churning around in my head, it will stir something up. Maybe it will eventually help me start unlocking the doors in my head.

  “You ever find yourself up this way again, I’ll always have a cold one waitin’ on you,” he grins.

  “I’ll take you up on that.”

  He shakes my hand, his grip firm. “Thanks for everything you’ve done, Echo. I can’t tell you how grateful everybody in this community is.”

  I nod and return the shake but don’t say anything. There really is nothing to say. He gives me a tight smile and moves to go but turns back and uses his cane to point at the giant spoon.

  “You know, sometimes we get so caught up tryin’ to figure out all of the why’s and how’s of a thing, we lose sight of the big picture,” he says.

  “And what is the big picture.”

  He gives me a grin. “That, sometimes, it’s just a goddamn spoon.”

  He turns, and I watch him gingerly limping his way across the grass. I lose sight of him in a crowd and turn back to the sculpture.

  “Sometimes it’s just a goddamn spoon,” I repeat softly, bursting into laughter.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I’m in my hotel room, packing up my things, getting ready for the return trip to Chicago. With no place better to go, I might as well go there. I’m just about to slide the laptop into my bag when I hear the chime of an incoming video chat. I assume it’s Justice calling. But when I open it, I see that it’s coming from Delta.

  I sit down at the table and hit the button to accept the call. After a couple of moments, the line is encrypted, and her familiar silhouette appears on the screen.

  “I was just starting to think you’d forgotten all about me,” I start. “I was hurt.”

  “Now who sounds like they have a crush?”

  “You wish.”

  “I don’t know about that, but I do prefer this less growly, less surly version of you, Echo,” she replies in her rich English accent. “Why the change of temperament?”

  “I guess the weather up here agrees with me.”

  She laughs, and I see her silhouette lean back in her chair, in a little more relaxed pose. I think about everything Arthur told me about her, about the fact that she fought for me. That maybe the only reason I’m alive right now is because of her. It all swirls together in my head and somewhat helps quiet the chaos.

  “I know about the tracker,” I tell her. “In my arm. I figured you’d put one in the equipment you give me, but my arm? Really?”
>
  She pauses for a brief moment, and when she speaks again, it’s hard for me to not hear the tinge of regret in her words.

  “Of course you do,” she says. “You being who you are, I suppose it was only a matter of time before you found it.”

  “Why is it in my arm?”

  “Honestly? Because there are some who do not trust you, Echo,” she says. “There are some who see you as more of a liability than an asset. It’s SOP to implant them in assets who haven’t proven themselves completely on our side of the cause.”

  “Even now? After Maine and Chicago?”

  She sighs. “Sadly, yes,” she tells me. “There are some who are quite small-minded and did not think you should have been recruited to begin with. I, of course, disagreed vehemently with the assessment. Obviously.”

  “Obviously,” I nod. And that’s when I deliver a haymaker. “Is it because of who my father is?”

  I can physically feel her reeling on the other side of the computer screen. Her posture stiffens, and even in silhouette, I can see her body tense. So I decide to give her another shot.

  “But how can they not trust me if the Hierophant himself recruited me?”

  I didn’t think it possible, but she stiffens even more. And despite sitting there, straighter than the Washington Monument, she laughs.

  “You have been busy up there, haven’t you?” she asks. “I take it your journey of personal discovery has been fruitful.”

  “Not as fruitful as I would have liked,” I admit. “But I’ve gotten some good information.”

  “Such as?”

  And this is where the rubber meets the road for me. This is the moment when I decide to put my faith in this woman, whose face I’ve never seen, and who I sometimes find myself at odds with. This is the moment I make the conscious choice to take her from antagonist to teammate. I take a breath and let it out quietly.

  “Such as the fact that I know I can trust you,” I tell her. “That I know what you did for me. I know you have advocated for me from the start. And I appreciate it, Delta. I would rather be alive and trying to solve the mystery of my life right now, doing some good things along the way, than dead, to be honest. So thank you.”